Towards the end of his Rose Garden speech, which defended the merit of the Affordable Care Act despite glitches with the HealthCare.gov website, President Obama addressed the “politics” of the issue with some sharp words for his Republican adversaries.
“I recognize that the Republican Party has made blocking the Affordable Care Act its signature policy idea,” Obama said. “Sometimes it seems to be the one thing that unifies the party these days. In fact, they were willing to shut down the government and potentially harm the global economy to try to get it repealed.” Ultimately, the 16 day government shutdown did not alter the implementation of Obamacare at all, and may have actually helped obscure some of the problems with the initial rollout.
“I’m sure that given the problems with the website so far, they’re going to be looking to go after it even harder,” Obama predicted of the GOP. “And let’s admit it, with the website not working as well as it needs to work, that makes a lot of supporters nervous, because they know how it’s been subject to so much attack.”
The president again reminded the American people that “we did not wage long and contenuous battle just around a website. That’s not what this was about. We waged this battle to make sure that millions of Americans in the wealthiest nation on earth finally have the same chance to get the same security of affordable, quality health care as anybody else.” He reiterated to Republicans that he’s “willing to work with anyone on any idea to make this law perform even better.”
“But it’s time for folks to stop rooting for its failure,” Obama said, “because hard-working middle class families are rooting for its success.”
Watch video below, via CNN:
[photo via screengrab]
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